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If you’ve ever wanted to automatically visualize things like who’s working on different project
teams, employee location, seniority, or other factors relating to your organization, Lucidchart’s
Smart Container feature is for you.
Let’s explore how to use it.
For this tutorial, we’ll be working with this Marketing Campaign Plan.
I want to visualize my progress through this project in a more visual way than my original
spreadsheet, so I'm going to use Lucidchart.
I’ve included a link to the diagram in the video description below which you can use if you
want to follow along or apply what you learn after the video.
To begin, I’m going click this Import Data button at the bottom of the toolbox on the
left, choose “Smart Containers,” then click “Import Your Data.”
My data is in Google Sheets, but you can see that you have lots of options here for how
to import information into Lucidchart.
I’ll find my spreadsheet, then help Lucidchart map my data to the layout I want in my diagram.
I want my containers to be the “Status” of tasks for the project so that I can easily
see where we are with everything we need to do to complete the campaign.
And I want my shapes to describe each individual Task.
This next prompt is one you may or may not see when you’re working with Smart Containers.
Lucidchart is looking for something unique about each shape so that it can ensure it’s
always mapping the correct data to the correct shape.
Since I’m seeing here that my Unique ID field is completely unique (obviously) I’ll
select that and press Next.
And voila.
Lucidchart creates containers based on the status I've assigned to each project in my spreadsheet
and has added each of the tasks to their respective containers.
Next up, let’s style these shapes.
I’ll double click on the containers to get into “edit” mode for the individual shapes,
then use the options on the Properties Bar to change the color, font, or border style
of my shapes.
If I find a style I like, I can apply it to everything in my document by clicking the “Set
Default Shape Style” option in the banner at the top of the canvas.
You can also use conditional formatting to further style your shapes based on the data contained within them.
For example, we could create a rule that styles shapes based on its priority or deadline.
Learn more about conditional formatting by clicking the link in the top right corner
of the video or using the link in the description.
Now I want to move tasks around and use this diagram as a project management tool.
I’ll double-click into the containers, select the task I want to move, and drag it into
its new position.
I can add new tasks to the diagram by clicking the blue + button at the top of the container,
or add a whole new status container by clicking the + button just outside my container group,
label it, and drag tasks into it.
You can rearrange containers by clicking and dragging them.
Clicking the “shapes” dropdown menu gives us more options for displaying information on
the shapes in our containers.
Let’s add deadlines to appear on our task shapes.
If you need to delete a task, select it and press “delete” or right click and select
delete.
Oh, and one last thing, I can use the options at the top of the Smart Containers panel to choose
a new field to group by.
For example, let’s group these projects by the Team assigned to complete them.
With a single click, we can now see which teams are responsible for which tasks.
You can keep your diagrams up-to-date with the changes in your spreadsheets by simply clicking
“refresh data” at the top of the panel on the left.
Now, check out other ways to use Smart Containers by going to the template library and typing
“smart containers.”
Each template has instructions and links to tutorial videos to help you get started today.